Plex has become one of the best self-hosted media servers available today. It offers a great interface, reliable remote streaming, and a polished experience that few competitors can match. Features like hardware coding, library sharing, and Plexamp have helped it build a loyal community that continues to grow every year.
That doesn’t mean Plex has reached a point where users stop asking for upgrades. Even though Plex has been asking for it for years, there are still a lot of features that are missing. Surprisingly, some of these features are already available in tools like Jellyfin, which are free and don’t have the same financial resources as Plex. That’s one of the reasons I can’t completely switch to Plex. I’ve always installed Jellyfin to fill these gaps.
More granular profile controls
Come on Plex, it’s about time
My biggest wish is more granular control over user permissions. I want the ability to decide exactly what each profile can access, rather than giving access to the entire library. Things like folder-level permissions, collection-based permissions, and customizable user groups can make things much better.
A very good example of how control is becoming more important is how parental controls currently work on Plex. A family can keep a single movie library that includes everything from cartoons to horror movies. Current parental controls cover some situations, but many of us prefer to make only specific collections or folders available to younger viewers rather than maintain duplicate libraries. The current solution involves tags or separate libraries, which become difficult to maintain as collections continue to grow.
The appeal also covers families. I share servers with close friends, but only want to expose selected parts of my media collection. I’ve also seen people keep separate libraries for different languages or genres, so each user only sees content relevant to them. The current permission system makes these scenarios much more difficult than many users believe they should be.
And it cannot be done. Jellyfin now allows users to configure more detailed user policies, playback permissions, transcoding restrictions, and remote access settings. While it doesn’t solve every use case, it’s noticeably more flexible when handling multiple users.
Get a better look at history management
It deserves more attention
Browsing history sits quietly behind many of Plex’s most useful features. Integration with services such as Continue Watching, recommendations, viewing statistics and Trakt all depend on accurate viewing data. Despite its importance, Plex still offers relatively few tools to actually manage this data after it’s recorded.
Plex does not offer the ability to bulk edit browsing history, delete incorrect entries, recover accidentally deleted activity, export browsing data, and apply better filters when viewing content. You may only discover some of these limitations after something goes wrong. A server migration, metadata issue, or accidental change can disrupt years of browsing activity, but Plex provides very few built-in tools to fix these problems. Marking individual movies as watched works well for small libraries, but this approach becomes impractical when hundreds or thousands of titles need updates.
Local audiobook support
This remains Plex’s biggest missing media feature
Several feature requests appear consistently in the Plex community, such as requesting native audiobook support. Many of us have been asking for this on the official forums for years, and the topic comes up regularly on Reddit. Although Plex today can store audiobook files, it still treats them as music albums instead of recognizing them as a specific media type.
While I personally don’t have a very large audiobook collection, this limitation can cause a number of problems for anyone with even a decent collection. Long books become difficult to navigate because the interface was never designed around chapters or reading progress. Reading positions can be inconsistent, metadata often lacks important details such as narrators or book series, and organizing large collections can quickly become frustrating.
Plex should offer a dedicated audiobook library with features built specifically for long-term listening. Things like chapter support, reliable bookmarks, reading progress, series organization, narrator information, and audiobook recommendations can really elevate the experience. These capabilities are already available in dedicated audiobook apps such as Audible.
Plex’s music management still needs work
Plexamp doesn’t cut it
Music has always had an interesting place in the Plex ecosystem. Plexamp has earned itself an excellent reputation among hosting enthusiasts, and many consider it one of the best music players available on any platform. Its interface feels polished, playback works reliably, and features like Sonic Analysis and smart playlists give it a competitive edge with many commercial streaming services.
However, while Plexamp delivers a great listening experience, music management still lags behind on the wider Plex platform.
If you have a large music collection, you will quickly notice these limitations. Plex has better playlist management and smarter metadata management. It also offers poor support for classical music. The platform continues to struggle with layout management, reliable downloads, and better queue control.
Classical music illustrates the point particularly well. Traditional artist and album structures do not always accurately represent composers, conductors, orchestras, and performers. Plex handles most of these things well enough, but if you’re a dedicated music collector, you’ll likely run into organizational issues that need to be handled manually.
Plex is easily modifiable
it is so Recommending Plex is no longer easy like five years ago. Back then, the platform was clearly the most polished and user-friendly option available. However, apps like Jellyfin quickly caught on. Jellyfin is open source, completely free, and offers almost every feature you get with Plex while adding tons of extras on top. If something is missing, you can usually do it add it through the extensive plugin ecosystem.
Paying for Plex is going to be harder to justify. The company plans to triple its price a lifetime Plex Pass subscription starting next month.
